IT Cosmetics Is Under Fire for Its New Foundation's Shade Range

It's 2018 and anything less than full inclusivity and diversity in the beauty world is just not going to cut it. Due in large part to Rihanna's award-winning Fenty Beauty shade range, beauty brands are finally waking up to the fact that 10 different versions of "Ivory Linen" and one "Mocha" shade are unacceptable. But IT Cosmetics might have missed that memo.

Earlier this week, Instagram beauty account Trendmood1 posted a sneak peek of IT's new Bye Bye Foundation line on Instagram. You might notice something off about the photo. Namely, it looks like a box of beige with one — one — medium-brown shade thrown in. To confirm, Trendmood1 listed all the shades in her post and it's not pretty for IT: Fair, Fair Light, Light, Light Medium, Medium, Neutral Medium, Medium Tan, Neutral Tan, Tan, Rich, Rich Honey, Deep. Only three shades appear to even remotely apply to people of color.

Refinery29 was quick to point out how commenters on social media was not having it. "After seeing the whole Tarte controversy go down, you would think that people in the makeup industry learned their lesson, which is; include everyone," one commenter wrote on Instagram. "Da fuk is this shade range?" another commenter said.

People on Twitter are having an even bigger field day with the launch. "It Cosmetics was bought by L'Oréal for 1.5 billion dollars and they still can't invest that money into figuring out the color brown," one user tweeted in reference to L'Oréal's Multicultural Beauty Lab.

Allure reached out to the brand for comment and IT Cosmetics says there's a reason for the limited range:

"Bye Bye Foundation is the first-ever full-coverage moisturizer from IT Cosmetics. It’s a skin-care product, infused with seven key fermented ingredients plus SPF 50 physical-only sunscreen and full-coverage pigments. Typically SPF moisturizers with physical-only sunscreens have only been possible in a few shades — and at IT Cosmetics we’ve spent the past 2 years creating 12 skin-tone-adapting shades for this moisturizer (3 Light, 3 Medium, 3 Tan, and 3 Rich). And we continue to work hard to challenge this further," according to a statement provided to Allure via email.

"Due to the physical-only SPF in the product, we’re not able to go darker than our deepest shade," a representative of the brand added. "Expanding our shade range is a top priority and we are working on it!"